Elizabeth Holmes works the press like a pro

cancer to aids with a single drop of blood. She even had a piffy little story about how she was inspired to start their Nose because she was afraid of needles and couldn't stand to let a little prick to draw her blood be stronger than she was. Honestly, it's

kind of a great story and it worked. In twenty fourteen, Forbes named Elizabeth Holmes the world's youngest self made female billionaire, and by that time Tharaohnose had raised over four hundred million dollars in venture capital and was estimated to be worth billions. But it was, of course all a scam.

Pharaohnos's devices could never test blood. Elizabeth Holmes and her former partner COO Sonny Balwany played everyone wealthy investors and board members, including Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of Education Bessi Devas,

and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The retailed pharmacies meant to house the devices, and most importantly, the patients, like the mother with a history of miscarriages whom their nose devices wrongly told that she would never be able to have a baby, someone given a false HIV diagnosis who then had to wait months until they could afford a follow up test, and someone given a false cancer diagnosis.

Elizabeth Holmes hurt real people, but that fact did not stop her from doing a fluffy profile in the New York Times magazine back in May, right as her sentencing for fraud was in the headlines called Liz Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth. I'm sure she does, where she soft launches her new nickname, Liz not Elizabeth, and gives us the I'm just like you treatment, complete with glossy photographs of her cradling her newborn infant in her arms.

A lah Madonna and child if Madonna had been facing

jail time now. The piece was pretty universally reviled, and with the recent news from last week that Elizabeth Holmes's sentence is being quietly shortened by two years, the profile seemed like a perfect bookend because Elizabeth Holmes rose to prominence with the help of slick media profiles, and it left me wondering about the role that those exact profiles had in her rise and ultimate fall from grace and the business of how those slick media profiles come to be. So I turned to an expert.

buttoned up group. And after that I went over to Marie Claire. I wanted to try more general interest magazine, and I was very fortunate because it was the you know, media had started to coalesce around women's media. There really wasn't a formal women's media outside of Jezebel really at that point, so I was there. It was pre lean in, so I was there at a very formative time, which was kind of exciting and also strange because suddenly women were hot and in like a business sense right, and

it was exciting. There was a lot of interest on the advertising side, which was unusual, so that was cool. I got to do very cool things there. Then I went over to run Refinery twenty nine newsroom before I got recruited to work in television at A and E, which was really the I would say the seminal moment in my career because I got to see how the

other half lives. If you're in media, you know, you sort of look over that fence with envy, with lust, with your nose pressed against the wall and your tongue hanging out. I want to work in. Everybody, whether they'll admit it or not, wants the story that gets optioned for a movie that becomes argo. And so I got to work where those things get made, and I got to see how see what that was really like, which blew my mind, taught me a lot. I call it

my business school. I just actually used that phrasing this morning. It was my business school in a lot of ways. And then decided after that I'm gonna write I'm a writer, and I am a writer. And after I left A and E, I was working under Nancy Debuke. Nancy went over Device, so I had to write out my contract. I was writing. I was writing full time, and then COVID came and ended up working at Goo, which has been its own crazy trip. That's what That's how.

that was very new. And so the idea was to focus less on the burdens though there were certainly burdens and less on the challenges, though there were absolutely challenges of getting to the top, but more like, this is the view from the top, and this is how you can change things once you get there, and this is

why it's important that you get there. And so when it feels like you're ready to quit, or you feel like you don't have a shot, or you feel you know, discouraged, just remember this is the view from the top.

A year later, in twenty fourteen, Sofia Amoroso, founder of the retailer Nasty Gal, releases girl Boss, which is kind of the same thing as lean In, but with an alty, punk rock diy ethos. That same year, Elizabeth Holmes's media attention explodes, Fortune Forbes, t The New York Times Style magazine inc. She's not just in these magazines, she's on the cover writing about women and work and money and success. Just felt hot. It's an era that Leah remembers very well.

who denizens of these things. So it was like a club right, and coming out of Forbes, I never felt like I belonged to a club because Forbes really did not subscribe to this idea that there was like a media community. It always was standoffish about being part of a club. And so when I got to Hurst, which owned Mary Clare, I wasn't terribly well connected because I didn't, you know, it wasn't part of my upbringing, so to speak.

And so now I was part of a club, and people started knocking on my door, and suddenly I'm editing Sophia Marusso and suddenly I'm in a off the record conversation with Cheryl Samdberg, and it was like, oh my god, Like it was cool, you know, and it was fun, and it came with all sorts of crazy perks. The downside, obviously, is like now in retrospect, we can see how, you know,

how much of a herd mentality it was. In fact, I was like, you know, looking through I always I have all my stuff from that period, all my spreadsheets, all my contacts, my ROLLO ad act hey, like you know Elizabeth Holmes from there, nos, and like it was.

So obviously we all are living with the fallout from that, you know, that tunnel vision, and I was part of that, Like I have to own that I was part of that tunnel vision.

need to invite that person to my event. So, you know, when you made like if you could get into a women's book, if you could get into a women's magazine, other we started to notice that other people would put these women who we had discovered or we had you know, and I'm not talking about there no specific Elizabeth specifically, but just generally, you know, they would start to appear on other lists. So we felt like we were part

of the game. And I think she understood that innately that she could be a very She was a very good shorthand for a certain type of woman that fit a very accessible profile. I mean, the most obvious, the most obvious billboard for that is her wardrobe, right, Like, I'm the female Steve Jobs, Like, you can't get you can't get a shorter shorthand than that, right, Like how

easy to digest is that? So she instantly got how to navigate media, which I find fascinating because generally speaking, I think tech people in tech and other industries outside media still don't get media. But she got it. So she got the look, she got the speak, she got the way to distill your story and your what your company does in a way that made sense for like an article that was only three you know, a little caption that was only three sentences, or a full on profile.

So she understood how to you know, she understood how to make it sing for a media person. Like when we go into I think, you know, it's helpful for people to understand how it worked in the magazine business, and though it's changed considerably since then, it'll give you a sense of why people ended up occupying the spaces in you know, in the culture that they did. When we would go in to pitch someone for a magazine page,

it wasn't a done deal. I wouldn't just go in and be like, I'm gonna put so and so on a page. I had to get approval. I had to get my editor's approvally editor and she's approval. So you would always walk in with you know, your pitch, you want it, and of course you want your pitch to get approval. You want your pitch to win. And a picture pitch in a picture and you know, and so they're looking at it like, oh, I won't do I. Is it diverse enough, is it glossy enough? Is it

you know? Is it gonna work? Like I'm not going to bullshit you and pretend that it was very well meaning, because there were pieces of it that weren't well meaning. There were pieces of it that were like, is this gonna look good on a page? And I hate that that's.

attempt to defraud investors. According to journalist Ben Smith at the New York Times, the company COO and co founder Samir Rau even went so far As disguising his voice to impersonate a YouTube executive on a conference call with Goldman Sachs in an attempt to secure a forty million

dollar investment. Stories like this one and Faranos makes clear how much of the shiny, flashy success can just be a grift, one that is buttressed by tech press failing to peek behind the curtain and ask the right questions, questions like what's going on here? How are you making money? Is this whole thing legit? Do you think that there are ways that there are tech people who are kind of playing that game today where you kind of I don't want to use the word trick, but you know

how to play the game. And you know that journalists and media folks might also have deadlines, might also want their their piece to look a certain way. So they're just like, we're not going to ask too many critical questions. We're just going to run with this and if it turns out to be a scam, well phobe.

I don't get there there. And I'm going to tell you that Ozzie Media. I was talking about Ozzie Media in my for what It's Worth. I mean, I have no evidence of this and credit where's due to bed Smith? But like I was talking about Azzimedia forever because I remember those three years when Ozzi Fest was trying and they could never do an actual Azzi Fest. But I remember seeing ads on the subway and the tickets were expensive,

and I was like, who's going to these things? And also like, more pressingly, how did they get that talent? Because having tried to book events at Hurst and Forbes, I know that it's hard to get even one person to agree, let alone all those people to agree without paying them, So like are they getting paid and if so, where's the money coming from? Like I had very like basic questions about how this all worked. And so it wasn't surprising to me when it was all smoke and mirrors.

But I have those conversations all the time. There are some women and men, but some women in the space that I often like, I have this parlor game I play with some friends. It's like how does what's It's like, how does this person get by? That's the game I play, How does this person get by? Because I see I see this like world of success and a business, but I don't see that business in the wild, right, Like I don't see people using the company, the product. I

don't see the copy, the content. I don't understand how it works. And maybe I'm just not that smart or maybe I don't understand the business. But like I sometimes ask myself, how is that a thing? And then I'm like, oh, they're playing a media game. That has to be the only answer.

is the mathmathing on this? And I do think there's this there is this dynamic of people faking it till they make it, and you're not supposed to really peek behind the curtain because if you did, you might see that it's a house of cards or it's a little bit of a grift.

little more skeptical about? And so like the Elizabeth Holmes thing, that story that ran recently, the one you know, after she'd been convicted, and it was like the Madonna and Child picture now like a notorious picture that they ran

in the business section. If I recall, like, to me, that was scandalous, Like I actually, I think it's a testament to how fractured media is that it wasn't a bigger scandal because that it managed to pass all those checkpoints and get not just the coverage but the length. Do you know how expensive it is to commission a photographer for a shoot like that? There were wardrobe changes in that shoot. There was probably a stylist on that shoot.

Now did Elizabeth Holmes pay for it? I don't know, but like we're talking, this was like a resource intensive shoot for a newspaper, you know. Over I think it was like three jumps front page and then two and then spread. So like that's that's an investment of a story. And so that response afterwards that like oh it's winking, you know, like there's a winking aspect to the store. You just don't get the joke. No, no, no, no, no, no no no no. We don't do that at the Times, like

you're not GQ. You don't get you know, like no, and also like don't talk down to me that you and ps. I love the New York Times. I love and hate the New York Times. It's like it's my Bete noir. I'm like obsessed with the times, but I just felt like that response did not wash with me. And I was insulted by that response because I felt like, you, of all people, should not go around pretending you're smarter than your audience. Like that's not cool, that's not the

deal we have with each other. That, oh you didn't get the joke, it was a winking story. No, no, no, Well that bothered me.

to fall for a grifter. What do you what do you take of that? Of that or what do you make of that response?

is ruthless. So as I tell you know my colleagues at GEO and beyond, you don't get the benefit of sitting on the reader's shoulder and whispering in their ear. It's tongue in cheek. The idea that you have that is is ludicrous, it's laughable, and it's ridiculous, Like it's on its face it's ridiculous. And in the business section, no less, not the style, like all of it just didn't was like irritated me that that that's what we're going to go out with, that's the that's the narrative

we're going to go out with. This. It was a total come on, It was a total pr thing. Listen, if I got a call that said you can have the pre jail Elizabeth Holmes for a Q and A hell yeah, I would take it. But that's not the issue. The issue is not that they took an interview with her. It's how it was packaged and how it was and how it was delivered to us at this moment in time. Her crime maybe not as worse as you know, the we work guy, but like according to who right like

her crime she heard people. She defrauded people. So not only is the issue this like you know, this a notion that we didn't get the nature of the story, but also you're giving three pages of real estate to a woman who's had plenty of ink by the way, and has been convicted of very serious crimes. Like I just that bothers me. For every story you do, there's

a story you're not doing. We're in the age of limited restore for media, like notoriously, these resources are scarce, even at a company like The Times, So I forever story you're doing, there's a story you're not doing. And that's what I spent a lot of time thinking about,

why did this story pass muster? So like, for example, what caught my eye just recently was you know, I can't remember if it was Twitter or threads, but Washington, the Washington Post was pushing a newsletter about Barbie, which blew my fucking mind because Washington Post a newsletter which is a separate product that requires resources. It requires some engineering support, it requires product support, it requires editorial support,

so lots of different stakeholders, resource intensive. It has to be populated with content, has to have a calendar like these are all things that go into something like that about Barbie. So that tells me Barbie's doing phenomenal numbers for the Washington Post. Otherwise why would they do it? Which is interesting given their audience and their and their birth right, their remit. That's caught my eye, and I just thought I need to hear more about that. I need to understand how that came to be.

are critical of Amazon and their business practices. How do you sniff it out when something just doesn't seem right to you.

to talk to people. Love to talk to people and find out like what's hurting their business, what they're thinking about, who's up and coming in their business, who they're afraid of, and if they'll talk to me, I will absolutely talk to them. So there's just a lot, you know, I guess I'm just interested.

school library in Florida. Naturally I instantly contextualize this story within the larger cond text of book bands happening in Florida and across the country. Now, this is obviously a real thing that is happening in Florida, but that particular thirty second TikTok might not have actually been showing the full story. I mean this as a compliment. It might

not sound like it you often are saying. It's often like not what you might think, right, So, like, your coverage really challenges me to look beyond my own biases or my own understanding of how I think stories come together in media, and it doesn't always align with my conventional wisdoms or you know, biases or whatever I might be thinking. Like, and you do such a good job of pulling back the layers to what's actually going on.

I'm thinking, in particular of that viral TikTok where it was like a school library and they had all these boxes and boxes of books, and presumably these are books that are being removed from the school library because they're inappropriate really feeds into the conversation we're all having about things like book bands and you know, books being challenged in libraries. You called the school or call the library

to actually ask what's going on. And there was actually more to that story than like that thirty second TikTok. What have you believe?

who's going to give me this scoop quickly. So I'm always like, if I see that in the morning, I'll buy all my goals to get it done by the end of the day because I want to be able to tell a reporter despite whatever deadlines you have, you can usually get a response by the end of the day. So part of it is just me staying on my

toes in that way. It was pretty easy because I think it was Broward County and there's like a Department of D there, and they put me in touch with their comps person, So I did get an answer by the end of the day. Now then sevitable follow up I should have done to that was do we believe the Department of ED right like they said? If I recall correctly, They said that they are.

Barra County Pass there was a lawsuit. In the settlement, they agreed that every ten years or so that they were going to upgrade the libraries. They had to by law, and so this was part of that settlement. We are required to upgrade these books, and these are the books that no longer meet our standards because they're old and they're dated and whatever. And so that's kind of fascinating

because that turns the whole narrative on its head. Right, Actually, they're complying with a lawsuit that's supposed to provide equity for students who might otherwise not get it. And that's like, that's an important thing we should be talking about.

Of course, we're looking at them throwing away books that might be, you know, about subjects that we want them to learn about. But we have to do our job.

need to make the calls and so. And it has real life repercussions because we're seeing courts claw back writes and privileges for reporters all the time. We're seeing, you know, reporters not be able to maintain confidentiality with sources. In certain cases they have to turn over their notes. They're being imprisoned for maintaining confidentiality court case after court case. This is very worrisome. I know this because I work with a for amendment lawyer who's like the top of

the game. I'm one of the privileges of my job is I get to work with this like well known First Amendment lawyer Ky Falkenberg, So I hear about these cases all the time, and so they're having real life impact on journalists around the country. So we damn well better do our part and not buy into narratives because they make for cheap stories. Have I written my share of them? You bet I have, and I am embarrassed by them. I am regretful of them, and I hope

I never repeat them. But like, these are the lessons we have to learn from the last decade, and it pains me to no end to see you know, reporters like just like I think it's something we need to champion as a group. We have this, you know, this poor Wall Street journal reporter stuck in a Russian jail for doing exactly what he should be doing for reporting, you know, for reporting, and he you know, he's missing

his family, he's he's probably suffering. Lord knows what we can't take for granted that there are repercussions to what we do. I think it's very serious our jobs, and it is a noble profession, but then we have to do our part to live up to what makes it noble. We have to report, we have to like make the calls. It's that simple. That's how I see it.

on this TikTok. I'm really grateful that you're modeling how to not just fall right into that like easy story, easy write up, and tell a fuller story because it really matters well.

else was, and I wanted to stay sharp. So I taught myself had a podcast, and part of it was just like figuring out who to talk to. I need to talk to smart people who have thoughts on what's happening. And one of the first conversations I had was with Errol Lewis, and Erra Lewis is New York famous, like he's New York One reporter, like like old school, like this guy is it right? But he also appears on I forget what network, but he appears on cable all

the time. He's just he just knows his shit. Era Lewis is the guy and I had a nice conversation, like I really memorable. I remember like listening to it again and again after because what he said was so so it was profound, like I'd never thought about it like that. We talked about objectivity, which is the hot button issue for journalists right now, and he was like, look, I have opinions. I don't shy away from sharing my opinions, but they're informed, like nobody knows this town better than

I do. When I show up to a meeting and I'm covering it. I know exactly what happened at the ten meetings before. I know who the players are, and I know why they're saying what they're saying. So I come to it with this breath and with this experience that is not challenged. By the way, you will never hear anyone challenge Erra Lewis for bias. Why because he

did the work. He did the work, and so I thought that's so interesting, Like, yes, of course, of course, you're a human being, Like you're not one hundred percent objective. You have feelings about this issue, you believe in right and wrong, you believe some issues fall on certain sides, and you're you know, And he doesn't necessarily write it like down the line, but it's informed and he brings that expertise to the four and I think that's that

for me, was like, that's become my north star. Whether he realizes or not, but he had a real impact on me. That conversation.

We just not We just live them. We say that because for decades women's magazines this like afterthought in media, This looked down upon category occupied a very i won't even say protected, but like a special place. We were in nail salons, We were in hair salons, places that men weren't, and so we could have conversations with you that you couldn't have at home, because your husband would beat the shit out of you if you talked to

him about it. Right, we could talk about how like, oh I got a terrible sonogram back and I'm not sure I can keep this baby, or oh my husband's beating me, or oh I you know, I'm not satisfied sexually.

Like these were stories that women's media was telling, and we can hold our nose up at them and say, oh, women in peril, and you know they they codified certain stereotypes of women, and there's they're sure, like we can have that discussion, but we also need to talk about how this sneered at form of me was the one place where you could talk to a woman like she was in the bathroom at a restaurant and asked for a tampon, Like you couldn't do that in US Weekly

or USA Today or People magazine. And so I just want to like acknowledge you couldn't do that because we allowed for women that freedom. And that's part of the DNA of this repro rights thing, you know, it just it just is we take for granted that it is because it was early on it was like this secret, private forum we could have discussions where we didn't judge women. Maybe we judge them about their weight, We definitely did that. We judged them about their skin and their age. We

one hundred percent did that. But we also talked to them about the you know, like nothing is as black and white as like good bad. It was a very nuanced thing and so strange. But it's hard to have nuanced conversations about media with media people.

worst of our business. But I've also seen like the very thing that I love about this business, like the wanting to talk about things and talk to people and hear what they have to say, whether you like it or not, Like I just don't like that we're becoming resistant to it. And I get it, Like I get it. I get why I don't have a trans child who's rights are up for grabs. I'm not raising a kid who you know, I'm not looking for, you know, like I don't have as much on the line as a

lot of other people do. And so I get that. Maybe I don't appreciate the stakes, but there's something about not being able to talk about it, not like I don't like that I'm the only person or like that comes with risks, Like I don't like that we're not supposed to talk about things, Like what's wrong with talking about things? I'm not I'm not like trying to shove policy down your throat. I'm just trying to have a conversation. I'm trying to understand the world a little better, trying

to understand like we should be able to talk. You know, I've been spending a lot of time with I've been spending a lot of time watching Phil Donahue.

shortly after. But he had a way about him that felt like I don't know if it was the error or him or maybe a bit of both, but he had a way about him that opened the floor to people to talk about how they really felt and want what they could learn from someone who didn't feel that way, And there was something like nonjudgmental about it. And he also pushed like if you watch some of those episodes, he would push them so, but why do youth, you know, like he was pushy, and I just there's like it

was special. It was like a special thing to watch because he did not shy from hot button issues. We could never there could never be a sho like that right now, never ever, ever, ever, and why not? It was like, why can't we just talk to each other anyway? I sound corny, but that's how I feel.

important public figure profile piece in general. Take that now infamous Megan Markle profile and the Cut, for instance, what probably would have been a standard profile about her thoughts on parenthood and her morning routine included one small detail that gave readers a quick glance beyond the polished pr talking points and preapproved subjects that were used to in these kinds of profiles. The profile says that Megan sometimes sounds like she has a tiny bachelor producer in her

brain directing what she says. At one point in our conversation, the piece reads, instead of answering a question, she will suggest how I might transcribe the noise she's making. She's making these gunneral sounds, and I can't quite articulate what it is she's feeling in the moment because she has

no word for it. She's just moaning. Now, that little detail about the noise that Megan makes before answering a question seemingly confirmed what we all know, that a famous person's public persona is actually carefully manufactured, and it proved just too good to resist. But in this day and age, what exactly is the celebrity profile?

song profile about her life blah blah blah. And there's one little bit where she gives the author like suggestions of how she might be able to describe a specific little noise that she made, and that tiny, little throwaway thing became the thing, right, so there's a whole profile

that was the thing that people zeroed in on. Do you think that we're I don't know, kind of beyond the usefulness of the problem the public profile, like, what are your thoughts on how how that is evolving as a media product.

make no mistake about it. But occasionally you'll get a story like that where something is revealed, right and it's not off, and that something is revealed about someone who we think we know everything about, and that's interesting to me. So in the case of Elizabeth Holmes, it revealed something about the paper and not Elizabeth, which I thought was interesting, but like a process that you didn't know could happen there. But in the case of Megan Markle, like what I

found astonishing about it was that it did. It was contrarian because at the time here in the US, there was this especially coast on the coasts, there was this like we must protect her, this kind of vibe, right, like she deserves our protection. She's you know, she's being vilified for her race. It's racist and and in fact

that might be true. But there was like something that went against that narrative in that piece, and it was brave because doing so opened up the reporter to you know, all the kind of kinds of attacks that we see on social media now and we don't like what someone says, but it revealed something pretty amazing, and it confirmed this kind of you know, other narrative about her, that it's

all contrived, that it's all manufactured. I mean, it literally confirmed that, like you couldn't pick a better which is partly why it was so juicy and delicious and tasty, because she's literally confirming that this whole thing is artifice, not that I think it is, but that it actually is. And I thought that was just really an incredible detail for the writer to put in, But how could she not write, like, Wow, what a thing to have happened

in an interview with celebrity. I've done a few celebrity profiles. They're always negotiated to the nth degree, which is partly why I find them so boring, because publicists are so wrapped up in them. It's very rare to get a piece with someone where a published publicist is not negotiating everything from where it's at.

So I rarely find them interesting, And I would love to see data that shows if people actually get through these pieces, because I don't think they don't. I don't think they do. I'm trying to think of the last profile I read. I can't remember, but they're just like as an art forum, they're like they're just they are for an era when we didn't have as much access to celebrities as we do now, so they are a very dated art form in my mind.

in that publicist roster. We need the studio not to be mad at us, because then they'll invite us to important events and also maybe advertise with us, you know, or or the beauty brand that that person is an ambassador for. We need their advertise and we want to piss them off, and like there's a whole like business

behind those decisions, and people are wise to it. One of the one of the most frequent questions I got asked when I was at Marie Claire and even after, was you know, oh, tell me what mescarity use, or tell like a makeup question, or oh I saw that

in the magazine. And I would always be like, you don't really believe that they're they like that, right, because it was obvious to me that it was all part of this like game about you know, And I learned actually I learned, you know, there are certain number of credits that credits being appearances in the magazine that a brand is either formally or informally allowed, like oh, that we owe them credits. I used to hear that all the time, like we have to put this on your page.

You're doing a career Q and A with so and so, but I need to put this shoe on the page. So we're going to do a sidebar of things you should wear to your work when you're going out afterwards. So because we owe this brand credits like they're not, you know, there's it's a business behind those decisions. It's sad but true, and I think people are wise to it.

responsible journalist. And I just want, I guess, I just want people to be aware of why we make the choices we do as a business, as you know, as a profession. So like the whole uh, you know, when a movie comes out, there's a premiere, you're going to see that that celebrity do a round robin of interviews. All those outlets are going to try to get the celebrity to say something off the cuff. It never happens.

Sometimes it happens like it's all just such canned garbage, and it's it's like, we have to be a little better now, I think because the audiences are wiser, and what's the net result of that. They're going to TikTok and they're going elsewhere where they can get a little more authenticity from anywhere from people who you know, it's like we've seen the diminished value of celebrity culture, which

it's not. I don't have an opinion on It's just fascinating that people are turning to forums where they are getting authenticity and less makeup and less bullshit they're getting. They want the real, real and I get it. I get why, because we're feeding them can shit and telling them, look how awesome this is, and they now know what awesome.

Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.